Meta

Social Media Jersey Winners, Rewards and dammit maths is hard!

Hey there sexy people. I say sexy, because you’ve all contributed to creating the coolest and soon to be most-universally significant prize in cycling history. Well done to you all, through your promotion of our fundraising and competition you’ve helped us to raise over $3500 US to give back to a host of very deserving riders.

Basically you’re fucking awesome. So thanks!

In the end we had 30 nominees from our three races and a HEAP of cool blog posts, tweets, facebook updates, pictures and other social media stuff to wrap our heads around. Once the voting took off, it really took off. We had something like 4000 million votes on the first day. In the end I think everyone on earth voted at least twice. Or I’m making those stats up and the real number is more like 4605 (it actually is 4605). Point is, it was great and we had a lot of fun. We hope you did too. But the very best part is that we raised enough money to be able to award 11 prizes this year, which is really fucking cool.

Just to keep things tantalising (and to piss you off if you’re using an RSS reader) I’m going to announce our winners after the jump.

Along with our congratulations Emma is the (I presume) proud recipient of:

1 year’s worth of bragging rights

A very cool certificate proving she is the winner

A tshirt also proving she is the winner which she is under no obligation to wear

A $500USD prize

I’d also be totally willing to send her a novelty crown if someone wants to make one (subtle hint).

Congratulations Emma! Make sure to bring this prestigious victory up every time Laura starts going on about the Olympics. I suggest comments like “Do you know how many people have won an Olympic medal? Thousands. They practically give them away in cereal boxes. Do you know how many people have won the Unofficial, Unsanctioned Social Media Jersey? I’ll give you a hint, her name is Emma Trott!” and then maybe shout “IN YOUR FACE!!!”

But that’s not where we finish, because fuck me we’ve got a heap of prizes to give away. Let’s keep going!

We’ve also been able to award prizes for the 2nd and 3rd positions on overall votes. Basically this gives us a GC podium for the whole competition.

Coming in at 2nd is Lex Albrecht. Lex is one of the most prolific social media practitioners I’ve seen. She maintains a presence on twitter, facebook and multiple installations of her blog. She also has the dubious honour of being in my FSA VDS women’s team (sorry for jinxing you Lex).

Anyway, Lex receives a certificate acknowledging her award and a prize of $350USD.

Our 3rd place winner was an early front-runner for the overall and is a very deserving prize winner. Marijn de Vries is at least 18 kinds of awesome and has kept up a steady diet of awesome social media all year. She also receives a certificate and a prize of $325USD.

So there we have it folks, our overall podium. Please give a standing ovation to our winners:

Emma Trott

Lex Albrecht

Marijn de Vries

Worthy winners all, BUT not our only winners. Let’s keep moving, we’ve got more awards than the Emmys, slightly fewer than the Oscars and nowhere near as many as the Nickelodeon awards, but our winners are cooler.

Now we’re going to reveal the race winners for each of our 3 races. Think of these as roughly equivalent to the points or climbing jersey prizes in a stage race, the only additional rule being that one of our existing winners can’t also win here. That means Emma, Lex and Marijn are out of the running, but don’t worry because we’re not short on worthy winners.

Giro Toscana

A big congratulations goes to our Toscana winner, who among other things wrote this evocative description of the opening prologue – “Essentially, it was like ‘Go, go, go as fast as you can. Eek. Corner. Go, go, go. Hairpin. Go, go, go. Small bend. Pavé.” Tiffany Cromwell is our winner for Giro Toscana. She receives the race-winner’s certificate and a prize of $300USD.

Tour de l’Ardeche

And it was a close-run thing at the Tour this year but fear not for the multiplicity of mix-teams for the race also meant we got a host of great social media and Sara Olsson shone through as our eventual winner. Sara rode as part of a mix-team and had a bunch of great tweets, and this excellent pictorial blog. Well done Sara, you too receive a race-winner’s certificate and a prize of $300USD

But wait, there’s more…

For those of you counting at home, we’ve given out six prizes already, but that means we’ve got 5 left to go. Here’s how it’s going to work. Every rider from here on out who receives an award gets a prize certificate and a cash prize as listed along with their name. We’ve done this basically because you were all so generous so you’ve only got yourselves to blame/congratulate! These riders are the next 5 highest ranked on the overall voting who hadn’t already received an award. So here we go.

All these ladies have some excellent stories about their respective races. I especially love that it was Leah’s first French race and because I have a terrible sense of humour I loved Evie’s use of the #brainwashing hashtag.

Once again, a huge congratulations to all of our winners and another very heartfelt thank you to everyone for donating, voting and participating in something so seriously cool and awesome. We’re definitely planning to make this an annual thing.

Some housekeeping

My detailed and expert knowledge of statistics tells me that there are at least two people who will have done the maths and noticed that our prizes add up to a grand total of $3000USD. As we said at the start of this project, Sarah and I are committed to being totally transparent about where all the money goes and also want it to be clear that we’re not getting anything out of this beyond a bunch of new friends and a sense of having done something good.

So let me give a brief explanation of where we are at so far. We raised a total of $3535, which after RocketHub’s fees left us with $3252.20. So I suggested to Sarah that we cap the prize pool at $3000 so that we could post definite prizes as soon as possible and because that gives us a little buffer to help with the costs of fund transfers. Basically banks are bastards (I’d apologise if you’re a bank, but first you’d have to prove to me that you’re not a bastard) and will take money at every opportunity, obviously our goal is to give riders as much as possible so we’re hoping that we’ll be able to cover most (or even all) of the transfer fees with that little bit left over.

IF (and it really is a big if) there is any money left over then it will be the first amount included in next year’s fund. If you do have any questions or concerns, please do feel free to contact us or post them in the comments. And yes, we’re looking for a more permanent, less costly way to manage this in the future, but this is how it’s worked out this time around. Thanks again for being so great.

Your hair looks really nice today, something about the way the light is hitting it. And you’ve got a lovely smile.

We have looked at PayPal but I found their exchange rates to be criminal so didn’t investigate any further. We’re also a little bit constrained by the needs of the riders themselves depending in where they have accounts or ways to be paid so that they get the most benefit.

Acceptance speeches!! We demand acceptance speeches from all the winners! Video preferred, but still pictures with a note will do. ;-D (Please note, yes I’m joking. But if it did come to pass that a rider sent us an “acceptance speech”, I would be one happy HAPPY camper to see it!)

Congrats to all the winners and thanks to our organizers for all the work they’ve put into pulling this together.